Are there no downsides to NetApp SAN solutions other than price? [closed]

Solution 1:

We have had some ups and downs. Including finding our first ONTAP bug before we'd deployed and producing some certain benchmark conditions that weren't quite what we expected.

But that probably makes it sound worse than it really is. In service it has functioned very well and I wouldn't hesitate recommending them to someone else.

Just a few pointers:

• Assume circa 60% capacity from your disks after right sizing and reserves.
• Simulate real-use benchmarking on a demo filer of the same specs that you intend to purchase.
• Check the max aggregate size for your chosen filer. They vary depending on H/W specs.
• Check the max volume size for ASIS if you intend to use de-dupe. Again it varies.
• Be prepared to use a CLI. Unless perhaps the new Windows NSM is your thing.
• Ensure that you've specced all of the licensed features that you require.
• Bargain hard ;)

Solution 2:

My thoughts:

• they are expensive. Find a reseller you trust, then work to buy at quarter- (or even better, year-) end.
• licenses will nickel-and-dime you (or rather, kick you in the junk for multiple-thousand-$) each time. Much of the nifty functionality is an extra-cost license.
• support is expensive, especially for EOL gear. However if you set it up right, most of the time the first indication of a problem with the unit will be when a replacement part shows up at the front desk.
• when you buy more capacity, buy it by the fully-populated shelf. (See above for quarter- and year-end.) Buying disks for a partially-populated shelf is UNBELIEVABLY expensive -- and NetApp will be very unlikely to drop price on them when you are buying one or two at a time.
• between disk right-sizing, spares, and parity, your effective space yield is disapointing compared to your "raw". Example: we have a 2020 with 12x500GB disk, but with right-sizing (a 500GB disk is right-sized down to 420GB), losing 1 disk as a spare and two disks as parity, 6TB raw turns into a fraction over 3TB yield. Make sure whomever is signing the PO understands this.
• NetApp does say that they don't have the ability to guarantee read throughput (this is because once enough pending writes are stored up, the filer interrupts all read processes to go do the writes right now), so processes which are sensitive to smooth data read flow (ie realtime video) might hiccup; for most purposes they are just fine.
• Backup of NAS (nfs/cifs) files is done through ndmp, which is usually an extra-cost option for your backup system. (You are planning to back this sucker up, right?)
• Mixed-mode filesystems (ie those which are shared through both NFS and CIFS) suck. Even though it is really really tempting to use mixed-mode, don't. Pick one or the other.
• Even though it is really tempting to over-commit volume space, don't. Over-committing means that when one volume fills, they all do. Between that and the usually unexpected behavior of snapshots (meaning that deleted files are not actually freeing up space) it can lead to all kinds of hilarity when the filer is full.
• Educate your user community about snapshots, that A) they can go back in time and dig things out themselves, and B) space-wise snapshots can be considered "free" so they shouldn't try to go into the .snapshot directories to "clean things out" themselves. This will take multiple tries because it's a tricky concept that some users just don't get.

All that said, we really like them. We pitch NetApps to all of the customers we think can afford them, and encourage those which can't to strongly consider it as a goal. For the most part they just work. Support is almost totally hands off, especially with the Autosupport turned on -- disks just show up when needed. The guys on the phone really know their stuff.